


treachery, and all ruinous disorders

by arbitrarily



Category: Succession (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Fucking as Competition, M/M, Multi, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Sibling Incest, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-01 14:55:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15145604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: Only one of them can win.





	treachery, and all ruinous disorders

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, boy. This is set some time in the near future, but series content-wise, after Episode 1.08. I am sure the remaining two episodes will render all of this as canon-noncompliant. 
> 
> Content warnings, in full: explicit sibling incest, drug addiction and drug use, potential coercion under the guise of competition, canon-typical fucked-up family dynamics, infidelity, fucking under the influence (drugs and booze), awful people being generally awful, and Roman Roy-typical offensive dialogue.
> 
> Update as of 7/29/18 and episode 1.09! If only for the points of a) Kendall's not fully divorced yet from Rava, and b) Roman is probably definitely gay (right??? how else do you read what they keep doing with his character?), this did prove somewhat canon-noncompliant!

 

 

The art of our necessities is strange,  
And can make vile things precious.  
KING LEAR  
 

You get off. You eat the shame for dessert.  
SUCCESSION

 

 

 

 

Of the three, it’s Shiv who always plays it safe. Or, it was Shiv who always played it safe until Kendall got clean. And then Kendall went flat, and boring (Roman’s word), safe, and then he went stupid and dangerous (Shiv’s words). She blames their father for that. That, and disappointment. Kendall never learned how to brace for impact. How to accept disappointment when it came barreling down at high-speed straight to your chest. Shiv never has either, but Shiv plays it safe. 

Their father would say there’s another word for what Shiv is. And then he did say it, out loud, in Connor’s kitchen. In front of everyone, sibilant and cruel and maybe even true. 

“Coward.”

 

 

 

 

Shiv knows. She always forgets to include Connor when she counts her brothers like this. By like this, she means, like her. She forgets Connor. Even if he is the one who calls her the most. Even if he is the one who fills her in on everything no one bothers to tell her. He has a different mother. He lives in New Mexico. He doesn’t try. Not really. Not the way they do.

 

 

 

 

Kendall is high when he arrives. Fucking Vail. They hit Vail before the weather hits. They: Kendall, Roman, Shiv. 

He hugs her too tight, his grip bordering on painful. “It is so good to see you, Shiv,” he says.

“Get off me,” she says. 

He bumps his forehead against her temple. “Good to see you too,” but he says it like he’s laughing at her. 

Shiv doesn’t bother to state the obvious. Roman had given her a heads-up before wheels-up by way of a poor attempt at manipulative sabotage. 

“Kendall’s unfit,” he had said. He said it like he had heard someone else say it first, about somebody else. It was probably Kendall. He had probably been talking about Dad. 

“Unfit for fucking what?” she had said, and then Roman laughed. 

“Jesus, I don’t know. Fucking life. This fucking weekend.”

This weekend: another attempt at another family truce, all in the name of Connor’s birthday. Connor had layered the guilt on hard and thick, and same as most Roy outcomes, it was easier to say yes than no. And for what? The snap early spring snowstorm had beaten Connor’s flight, and Shiv would put money down that her dad and Marcia hadn’t planned to come anyway. A last minute vaguely medical excuse. Or maybe they wouldn’t even earn that much of an explanation.

“No Tommy Boy?” Roman says. He hugs her the way she imagines frat boys would, all chest barreling into her own and an open palm slapping hard against her back. 

“A small mercy for this clusterfuck of a weekend.” Her mouth is tight when she smiles. 

Roman arches an eyebrow, boyish eager malice pouring off of him as much as his cologne stench. “The honeymoon over that fucking quick?”

Shiv looks anywhere but at Roman. Tom had called her as she was leaving the airport, headed for the resort, his apologetic tone needling her as heavy, wet snowflakes collected in her eyelashes. He couldn’t get out of New York. Shiv had exhaled noisily, unaware she had been holding her breath until then. Marriage, Shiv is learning, works better as a long-distance, part-time enterprise.

“It’s fine,” she said.

“It’s not!” His vehemence, like most things belonging to him, was off-putting. “Though my vexation at our separation only makes me feel all the closer to my wife. My Shiv.”

“That’s great. Look, I have to go fight for a fucking Uber or a cab or a goddamn horse-drawn sleigh or pair of cross-country skis, so I’m gonna. Yeah. Love you,” and then she hung up. 

“Just, don’t,” she tells Roman. 

“That’s a yes,” Kendall says. He’s already parked himself on the large leather sofa, his feet kicked up. The suite they are staying in takes up the better part of a wing of the resort. Back when she had been negotiating her attendance with Connor, she had snapped, “No one even owns a fucking house out there,” to which Connor had pointed out that made Vail not only beautiful but neutral ground. 

“It will be our Switzerland,” he had said.

“You know, we could just go to the actual Switzerland,” she said. 

So, it’s the three of them. Tom in New York, Kendall divorced, Roman single, no plus ones to ease whatever tension she can already feel building among the three of them. Her gaze skims over her brothers. Roman has found the bar and is making quick work of it, ice clinking into a waiting glass. Kendall’s knee jumps up and down, every part of him restless and barely contained. Shiv bites down on a sigh. Kendall when he’s high, she knows from experience, is a total fucking monster. Sharp and mean, decisive and ungovernable in a way she can only describe as unpredictable. She kinda gets it, the appeal of it for him. He’s still Kendall, he’s still a fucking asshole, but he at least seems to be firing on all four cylinders.

Roman pours three glasses. Glenfiddich, their father’s drink of choice. “Salut,” he says, carrying the glasses over to them. Kendall refuses to pick his up. Shiv takes Kendall’s glass and pours it into her own.

“Someone’s thirsty,” Roman says. Nothing ever escapes Roman’s notice, least of all something he can potentially weaponize. She must bore him though; his attention easily leaps back to Kendall.

“I gotta say, I’m surprised to see you here, bro. What with your radio silent prissy little bitch shit-fit, I thought maybe you were finally ghosting on your fucking family.”

Kendall doesn’t say anything for a long beat, staring at Roman all the while. Finally, he reaches into his pocket and drops a small baggie onto the coffee table. “Call it a fucking peace offering and quit whining.”

Roman grins wide. “With absolute pleasure.” 

“Though I would just like to say, it’s not like you made some grand effort to talk to me. I don’t recall any phone calls or emails or singing fucking telegrams.”

“Fuck you, man,” Roman says. He plops down onto the couch beside Kendall. “Gimme that shit. What you got?”

Shiv watches Kendall and Roman measure out rails on the gleaming coffee table, the edge of Roman’s black Amex card making each cut. They have fully embraced cliché. Shiv neither intervenes nor does she join them. She sits there, watching them. She’s like a documentary filmmaker — she will do nothing but watch this unfold. 

Roman rears back after he does two lines. He claps his hands together and whoops. 

“Let’s get this shit-show started,” he says.

 

 

 

 

In New Mexico, Kendall rode with Roman back to the airport.

He did not speak to his father that morning. That was for the best; he was trying a new model on for size, and in this model, Kendall Roy wasn’t a Roy. Not really. He did not speak to Logan Roy. He was an orphan, alone. It had made better sense a couple hours ago, but now Kendall was starting to come down. He blinked against that gritty feeling living behind his eyes. He was choosing to believe it was just as attributable to sleep deprivation as anything he took the night before. That morning. 

“You guys miss me?" he asked suddenly. Kendall was slumped low in the passenger seat, a pair of Roman’s sunglasses perched low on his nose. 

“Dude, you that fucked up you don’t remember crashing that shit and raining unholy Daddy-doesn’t-love-me hell down on all of us? And, hey. I’m gonna want those back, you fucking leech.” He gestured towards the sunglasses. 

Kendall tipped his head back. “No, man, yeah. I remember that. I mean, earlier. The actual session.”

“Eh.”

“No one even bothered to mention me at the first ever — ”

“ — most likely never-to-be-repeated — ”

“ — Roy family circle jerk?”

“Fuck, you’re needy.” Neither said anything for a long pause. Kendall’s mouth tasted like total ass. He was hungry; he wanted a gigantic plate of eggs. Bacon. Sausage. Those slimy, greasy potatoes no one ever seemed to know how to make except the housekeeper his father kept until Kendall was, like, sixteen. What was her name? It didn’t matter; she was gone, and so were her potatoes.

Roman sighed. “Shiv did.”

 

 

 

 

Kendall before was exhausting. Paranoid, manic. No one wanted to keep up with him. There was a dulled sheen to him now though that made Shiv even sadder. That was what she was feeling. It only took five sessions with her therapist to drag it out of her. “What you are feeling is sadness, Siobhan.” She couldn’t believe she spent the better part of a grand per session to be spoken to like a small child. 

“You’re grieving for your brother.”

“Please, stop talking. Okay? He’s not dead. He’s just a stupid fucking idiot.”

Kendall was in rehab. Kendall was in California, the only place for his thin skin in this world was a room with padded walls, or so their father had said. Shiv had popped a Xanax on the flight out, which felt a bit like cheating. Visiting your brother in rehab, taxiing into the LAX runway glazed on the pills Grace had given her the weekend before. “Roman has the uppers, but I prefer the downers,” she had whispered, conspiratorially. His and hers prescription drugs; quaint. 

She was relaxed enough when she sat down with Kendall in the institutionally groomed garden. No cacti, no blooms. All green. Kendall was wearing socks with sandals. 

“It’s really super chill. Very zen. I’m relaxed in a way I had no idea human beings could be relaxed. A part of me thinks it’s the Enya. A lot of “Orinoco Flow” happening in here, but that’s alright. I’m accepting the things I can’t change.”

“Kendall, come on.”

“Roman offered to jailbreak me, so, you know, that was nice.”

“He came out to visit?” Shiv couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. Of them all, Roman had been the most critical of this conclusion to Kendall’s debauched decline.

“No. But I do get phone privileges.” Kendall sighed, stretched. “He offered to fuck my wife, too. Keep her warm in my absence. I had to remind him I don’t have one of those anymore.”

“Kendall.”

“How’s Dad? How’s the old man?” He was sober, but he was flipping through the conversational playbook the same way he would when he was out of his mind. 

“He’s good. He’s busy.”

He fixed her with that flat, unimpressed look she hated, and she knew he would hate, to think reminded her of their father’s. “That’s not what I was asking, and you know it.”

“You know he’s worried about you. You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“Worried or embarrassed?”

She shrugged. “Two things can be true at the same time.”

“Fuck you, Shiv.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive ideas.”

“The press has it?”

“Of course the press fucking has it. Media tycoon’s heir apparent takes coke bender straight into the loony bin? MSNBC simultaneously shit and came in their pants.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Tycoon’s a stupid fucking word. And, it was ketamine. Some molly. Some coke. A lot of coke. Vodka. More ketamine.” She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. “Does it bother you?” he asked, his voice lower now, more reminiscent of the Kendall she knew, not this near-lobotomized, bottomed-out shell. “The heir apparent.” _Me not you_ , he didn’t say. He didn’t have to.

Shiv placed both her hands flat on the table and her mouth twisted wryly. “Well, with Hunter S. Thompson’s grocery list in hand, I think that’s my cue to leave.”

He grabbed her wrist when she stood. “Hey. I want to thank you for coming out to see me. I mean that. Thank you.”

His gratitude was a strange and slippery animal she was afraid to wrap her arms around. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him. He felt skinny in her arms, and what she was feeling was sadness. She paid five thousand dollars to be able to say that, if not out loud, then at least in her head.

 

 

 

 

Like most things Roy, this is Roman's fault. 

“It’s better like this,” he says a couple hours — several drinks and a depleted baggie of coke — later. “Just us.” There’s a stupid, soft and stripped, sincerity in his voice, but there’s something else too. Something vaguely dangerous.

“It’d be better if we all were dead,” Kendall says. He’s slouched on the couch, his forearm slung over his face. They both ignore him. 

Snow falls outside the big picture window, their own reflections bounced back on the dark glass, obscuring the view of the mountains. The fire crackles in a fireplace the size of a gigantic child-eating oven out of a Russian nightmare fairytale. Scotch is buzzing through her system; it’s barely past eight o’clock.

“What now?” she says.

Roman’s mouth leaks into a grin. “I think we should play a game.” And there it is: the vague danger. Roman as demon imp, calling for if not destruction then discomfort for his entertainment. 

Kendall lifts his hand and points his thumb down. “Veto.”

Roman’s grin only grows. “What? You’re too chickenshit? You haven’t even heard the game yet.”

“Veto,” Kendall says again, but it’s empty. Like he knows better, and he must because she does. Everything in this family is a game, treated as if there is a winner and a loser on the line. Shiv has to give Tom some credit: Tom had cottoned on to that fact early and unerringly easy, desperation seeping from him like the worst kind of flop sweat. Shiv had thought herself better than all that. Until now. Because here she is, still seated on the couch, still waiting to hear what Roman has to say.

And then Roman does say it. 

“You know what my last therapist told me? That this entire family is the victim of sexual dysfunction. To paraphrase: none of us know how to fuck or get fucked right. We treat it like a competition.”

“What the fuck did you tell your therapist to draw that conclusion?” Kendall says.

“Where are you going with this?” Shiv says. Uneasiness is rising in her. There’s a current growing strength, slipping beneath Roman’s words, and she doesn’t trust it. She doesn’t trust anything her brothers do.

Roman shrugs but his eyes are bright and hard. “We treat it like a competition,” he repeats, but this time it sounds more like an order. “First one to come loses.” Off their expressions — Kendall’s stonily blank, she imagines her own to be similar — Roman jerks his fist crudely. “We jack off,” he gestures his head faux-gallantly at Shiv, “or jill off, as it were. And,” he pauses, for effect or reaction, she can’t tell, “first one, loser,” he says. 

He offers it all like a dare. Like there is something to be lost and never reclaimed if they say no. He says it casually, but everything he ever does is casual, inconsequential despite the barbs he has buried underneath. He’s her brother; she knows how he plays, and it’s always petty. 

“Do you realize how disgusting, how insane, you sound right now?” Kendall says. His mouth is tight, his shoulders tensed, like he wants to fight. The outrage is part performance though, Shiv thinks. He’s still sitting here.

But then, she’s still sitting here, too. She takes a cautious sip from her glass, purposefully silent. 

“What, man? You don’t wanna know which one of us breaks first?”

“Breaks first? I didn’t peg you as one for euphemisms,” Shiv says. 

“Whoa, look who’s upping the ante. You wanna put pegging on the table here? I gotta say, I’m currently undecided how open I am to the prospect, but Kenny here might be willing to let you fuck him with that stick he keeps up his ass.”

“What the fuck, man,” Kendall mumbles. 

“You want clarity? I’ll repeat myself then: you fuck yourself and whoever comes first loses. Straightforward enough, yeah?” His mouth twists, knowing it’s anything but. 

“Well, I’m out,” Kendall says. He still hasn't moved. Shiv sloshes her drink around in the crystal tumbler. She looks from Kendall to Roman and then back again.

“Like a little bitch. I should’ve known. Willing to fuck us every which way except for with his teeny tiny little prick,” Roman says. Shiv rolls her eyes.

“My dick’s fine,” Kendall says. 

Roman ignores him. “We can make it more interesting than that though.” The silence that follows is expectant, both Shiv and Kendall waiting for what he says next. A rookie mistake. “Since Kendall is, and I quote, ‘out,’ I’ll jack off and he can eat Shiv out. He beats me to it, makes her come first, I win, Ken loses. Shiv loses. Though Shiv gets her pussy ate, and lord knows she needs it.” She fixes a glare at Roman. “Come on. We all know Tom. He ain’t working his way through a clam buffet with any kind of results worth mentioning.”

“That’s a real fucked concept of winning you got there,” Shiv says after an unbearably long beat, the words a low drawl. 

Kendall scrubs a hand over his face, like he’s trying to erase what he just heard. “You know, I always knew you were one fucked-up little pervert, but this. Jesus, this takes the fucking cake. Who do you think we are? The fucking Borgias or some shit?”

“Did they fuck their sister?” Her skin tightens at the dangerous way Roman asks it. Like a child playing with its food before eating it. No, scratch that. Adding metaphors comparing anyone in this room to a child only makes this that much worse, Shiv thinks. Not that she’s considering it. Any of this. Not really. “I only catch your interest if you get to put me on a leash in a cage, you sick fuck.”

“Even Connor remembers you wanting to do that!”

“I was four!”

“Oh my god, this dog pound shit again,” Shiv says. She reaches for the bottle and tops off her glass, the two of them still arguing. Dog cages, military academy, chocolate cake, ass-fucking a personal trainer, whatever. She doesn’t care. Not really. 

“What would any of this even prove?” Shiv interrupts. They both go quiet. Roman’s eyes leap to her, like he can smell blood in the water.

“What it always proves, _sis_.” He shrugs. “Who’s best.”

 

 

 

 

“It would be nice if you two would make just the smallest effort with him.” Shiv had said it after the family Easter dinner. She and Tom had been approaching the one year mark and her efforts to fold him into the family had been awkward and ill-fitting, to say the least. 

“Why?” Roman said. “So you don’t have to?”

And so it was Kendall who offered: dinner with himself and Roman. 

“I feel like I’m in _The Godfather_ ,” Tom said, following it with a nervous laugh. “‘You come to me on the day of my daughter’s wedding,’” more forced laughter, the bad Brando impression enough to make any goodwill living within Kendall evaporate. Tom’s face quickly dropped into utter seriousness, total conversational whiplash. “I do want you both to know, I pledge my absolute loyalty to both Shiv and your family. I am yours, if you would have me.” Jesus Christ. 

“Okay, first? Chill the fuck out, man. We’re not the Cosa fucking Nostra,” Roman said. “And second? The Don’s currently at home, in his pj’s, blissfully unaware of your existence.”

“Oh. Well. Thanks?” Kendall shot Roman a quick look across the table. The smile Roman flashed him was bladed. 

“You and Shiv seem to be doing well,” Kendall said. He blatantly eyed his watch. 

“Better than well. Excellently, that’s what I would call it. We are doing excellently.” Kendall thumbed through his emails while Tom extolled graces and virtues he sincerely doubted his sister possessed. He talked about Shiv like she was a fucking goddess or like she was Roman’s favorite stripper at Scores. 

“And don’t even get me started on the bedroom!” Tom said. 

“We won’t,” Kendall said.

“Let’s get you started on the bedroom.” Kendall slipped his phone back into his pocket and glared at Roman, who merely shrugged. Kendall knew Roman liked to fuck with people, he didn’t expect anything less, but he hadn’t expected the bright gleam to Roman’s eyes, the cruel set of his mouth. And Tom, idiot, stupid, desperate Tom — who for the life of him, Kendall could not comprehend what Shiv saw in him — started to boast about Shiv in bed. 

“She’s a dynamo, insatiable. I’ve never met another woman with a greater endurance or appetite for cunnilingus.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Kendall muttered. Roman laughed.

“Tom said he had a good time with you guys the other night,” Shiv told them both when she saw them next. Father’s Day, a brunch. There was a quiet hint of gratitude to her voice, and the only thing Kendall could say in reply was, “It was no big deal.”

“Yeah,” Roman said. “Tom knows all about a good time.” Once Shiv turned her back, Roman held his fingers up in a V. He stuck out and waggled his tongue at Kendall.

 

 

 

 

_You have one unheard voicemail. Saturday, February 17, 3:32 A.M._

“Hey Kenny, you doghouse piece of shit. It’s your fucking brother, who, I might add, you have not fucking spoken to in almost a motherfucking month. I know your big boy feelings were hurt, you pussy, but give me a call. Proof of fucking life. [ _Breathing_ ] And make sure you don’t pass out on your back. Or your front. Can’t have a Roy choking on his own puke as their ticket out. And, oh yeah you better be coming to fucking Prague or whatever or Tom’ll be so sad and Shiv will so have to kill you, unless you’re already fucking dead, you fucking gaping asshole. Call me. Fuck you.”

 

 

 

 

Like anything else, Roman manages to goad Kendall by going after his pride. So fucking predictable. 

“Are you saying no because you fucking suck at it? Do I need to ask Rava? ‘Um, hi, Rava. Can my brother eat pussy or is that why you left him?’”

Kendall doesn’t say anything. Instead, he moves, jerky, angry. He gets down on his knees, his hands on her knees, threatening to open her to him. “Is this what you want?” he asks Roman. “Is this what you fucking want?”

Roman’s shit-eating grin is answer enough. “I’m thinking you should be asking Shiv that, some etiquette before the feast, Miss fucking Manners.”

Shiv should’ve known better. Kendall when he’s high is all impulse. All id, probably too, but she’s not his therapist, thank fuck.

“Get up,” she chides. Kendall looks wrong on his knees before her. Like she hasn’t earned it. He hasn’t earned it. 

“You forfeit?” Roman asks, eyes too bright. She glares back.

It’s not surprising. None of this is. They’re each playing their parts. Roman always has to push himself, test the limits to the point past acceptable. Kendall always needs to prove himself; he behaves, always, as if he is bartering for the immaterial: love, attention, respect.

And Shiv always has to win. She unbuttons her pants. 

“You know Tom’s told us all about you,” Roman says. Shiv doesn’t move. “You sit on his face. You make him fucking take it.” He starts to laugh. “You greedy fucking slut.” It's more praise than mockery. He keeps talking, but she stops listening. When she looks down, she finds an echoing dark light in Kendall’s eyes. 

“I always knew you were weak,” she says to him, her voice low and quiet, meant only for him. Her pants, her panties, are at her knees now. No coming back from a thing like that.

“No,” he says. His hands cover hers, drag those wool crepe pants down past her ankles, leave them bunched in a ball beside him. Her breath snags at the obscenity of her panties caught above her knees, her untucked silk blouse providing scant modesty. Almost always more filthy, the barely hidden. “You always confused the two.”

Her breathing is very loud to her. Kendall is slow, stupidly slow, slow but not hesitant, as he curls his fingers under the elastic of her panties. “Which two?” she asks. 

“Weakness,” he says, and he pauses. She can hear Roman’s belt clanging against the leg of the coffee table as he drops his own pants. This is unconscionable. Kendall has her panties off now. He opens her legs to him. “And hunger.”

 

 

 

 

Kendall’s apartment had that studied, _Architectural Digest_ look to it that implied either a sociopath or no one at all lived there. Instead, Kendall lived there.

After New Mexico, Roman had stopped by to see him. Roman, by personal decree, did not do self-assessment. He didn’t do introspection. He stopped by to see his brother because he fucking wanted to. It had nothing to do with the fact he couldn’t stop picturing that squalid fucking little house in the desert, Kendall inside it like that was where he belonged. Fuck that. He belonged here, this off-white room with a fucking Basquiat on the wall. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Kendall asked by way of greeting. “Who let you in?”

“Good to see you too, man.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked again. Roman looked around, found everything neat, orderly. The only thing out of place was the ring Kendall’s coffee cup had left on the table. 

“Just thought I’d pop by. Make sure you hadn’t gone full meth-head on us. Check you had all your teeth.”

“All accounted for. I’m too busy for meth. Get out.”

“Okay, cool. Though, like, if we’re picking parts here, I think it’s me who gets the resentment role, just saying.”

“Excuse me?”

“What don’t you get?”

“You get to resent me?” Kendall emphasized each syllable. He should read fucking audiobooks. Do a podcast. Billion Dollar Family Feud, sponsored by _ancestry.com_.

“Yes, I should resent you. Look, it’s not supposed to be my job, fucking babysitting you. Picking up the fucking pieces.”

“No one’s asking you to do any of that.”

“Right, fine. I’ll let you kill yourself then. We might all be better off.”

Kendall hit him in the face. A quick, mean jab that caught him under his eye. It surprised him, caught him off guard. Without thinking, he cracked his own hand across Kendall’s face. He watched a similar, dulled surprise register on Kendall’s face. He wasn’t Shiv. He and Kendall had never been like that, not really. 

They were now. Kendall was a scrappy fighter, unfair, while Roman thrashed without strategy, trying to land a hit anywhere he could. He twisted his body, and finally, he had Kendall under him. He held him down roughly, his hand heavy on the back of Kendall’s neck, breathing heavily against the side of his face. Roman had bitten his bottom lip; the copper tang of blood bloomed in his mouth. 

“Just, stop,” Roman hissed. “Fucking stop, man. Fucking,” and then he found he was empty. He had nothing more to say. Kendall’s body shook beneath his. “Stop,” he said. “Please.”

 

 

 

 

Roman’s cock is clutched in his hand. 

“I would just like to state,” Shiv says, “that the deck is more or less stacked against me.” Roman frowns; she doesn’t know what Kendall does, she doesn’t look down. “I can’t control Kendall,” she says.

“Fuck knows you’d like that,” Kendall says under his breath.

She ignores him, continues. “But, Roman can control his own hand. He knows how to make himself come and how not to. There’s no real accountability there. It’s not fair.” She doesn’t thinks she needs to say the rest: it’s always different when it’s someone else trying to make you come.

“Wow, are you always this pedantic about your orgasms?” Roman says. 

She doesn’t say anything. It’s a dumb argument, she knows. Like fairness is even a concept that can or should come into play with these two. She finally looks down. 

Kendall is on his knees between hers, bare to him. A sick feeling sinks within her. This is a line crossed that can’t be transgressed again. There are a lot of those lines in her work. She’s crossed most if not all. To win. 

She can’t imagine what she wouldn’t do to win. 

“You got a starter pistol or something?” she asks Roman, her tone dry. He squeezes his dick and winks. She throws back the remaining drink in her glass and noisily sets it down on the end table. Kendall is still poised, waiting. She’s not sure what she thought he’d be like when it came to this (fucking, when it came to fucking), but submissive isn’t exactly what she would’ve pictured. She doesn’t know why not. It fits him perfectly. He wants someone to tell him what to do. He wants someone to tell him he’s doing good. He wants approval; he wants to beg for it. That thought’s wrong, scotch slick in first her head and then racing down straight through her to rest right where Kendall’s eyes are trained. 

“You can’t cheat,” Shiv says, trying to find some of that usual steel to her voice. Kendall’s gaze has drifted up her body, resting dark and unfocused now on her chest, her nipples visibly hard under her silk blouse. 

“On my honor,” Roman says, mocking. “What the fuck’s he waiting for?” He cocks his head to the side, the mockery growing. “Does he not know what to do? It’s a cunt, Ken. You eat it.”

Kendall lifts his eyes to him slowly and at the same time his hands move up her thighs to spread her open wider. Jesus Christ, they’re actually doing this. Her entire childhood with these two was always a game of chicken; figures it’d migrate to adulthood in the worst way imaginable. 

Shiv watches Roman because it’s easier than looking at Kendall. She doesn’t know what Roman sees in Kendall’s face, but it makes his own go slack, if only for a moment, and his grip tightens on his cock.

“Let’s get started then,” Kendall says. 

 

 

 

 

It didn’t matter what they were fighting about. They always fought. This time, they were in their dad’s wine cellar and they were alone. 

Shiv had her back against the wall, literally and maybe even metaphorically. “Are you trying to intimidate me?” She laughed. Roman came closer.

“I don’t know. Is it working?”

“Not even a little.” Her voice was low but warm. It sucked that Shiv was taller than him.

But then, Shiv wasn’t just taller, she was scarier than him, too. She always had been, always unafraid to beat his ass if provoked, even the smallest bit. Roman remembered when they were in, like, high school, they were both home for the holiday break, and Kendall was home from college, too, and the ugliest they had ever fought was the day before Christmas Eve in the kitchen. The brutality was stunning, even then, how merciless they both were, how quickly that rage had leapt out of them both. He couldn’t remember what they had fought over then, but he did remember trying to hold Shiv down to the tile floor with his hand around her neck. Her knee kept popping up, trying to find his crotch. She had snarled and spat at him like a trapped animal. It was Kendall who stopped them from killing each other. Kendall, who had inserted himself between them, rather than trying to pull either of them off. It was his back Roman’s elbow pounded into the center of and his throat Shiv’s blunt nails scored down. 

Now, he got really close to her face. She was getting older and it was starting to show. He bet she hated that. 

Shiv shocked him by striking first — she darted out quick, like some kind of escaped snake from the zoo, and she bit his earlobe, hard. 

Roman reared back from her. 

“What the fuck. Holy fuck. What the — what are you, Mike Tyson?”

Shiv slouched back against the wall, amused. “I didn’t draw any blood.”

He slapped her across the face, as forceful in kind. “Fuck you.”

She punched him, her fist meeting more collarbone than shoulder. Roman stumbled back from her. His ear was tingling. Any other woman, and he was sure he’d be hard.

 

 

 

 

Kendall’s not even that good with his mouth. He’s tentative, perfunctory. His unshaven jaw prickles against her thighs, her cunt. Shiv wonders if he ate Rava out like this or if this is some weird performance anxiety crossed with real, actual anxiety. His sister’s cunt under his mouth and not his wife’s. The thought makes something jack-knife twist inside of her and her hips shift into him. She feels rather than hears when he gasps.

He gets a better grip on her thighs, his tongue moving firmer against her. She makes the mistake of tipping her head back, catching Roman in her eye line. His hand moves steadily, the sound wet, he watches them avidly. She rolls her head away, lifts a hand to her mouth to stifle herself when Kendall finally licks her clit. 

He goes to push two fingers in her, startling a noise out of her. “Hey, no cheating,” Roman snaps. So they’re making the rules up as they go. There’s no better metaphor for the Roys. 

Her hand twists in Kendall’s hair, pulling, his mouth open and sloppy wet against her, Shiv the same. She glances down at him and catches Kendall palming himself through his pants, his eyes closed. She squirms, slides lower on the couch. The suction around her clit is perfect and wrong and too much and she hears herself make an awful moan, and then she hears Roman laugh. Kendall’s hands hold her legs wider apart, the muscles at the hinge of her thighs protesting. 

“Don’t come,” Kendall mumbles against her, only to start to suck again. Her thighs tremble with the effort, her breath coming out high and quick. So different than with Tom. With Tom, she chases what he’ll give her. Here, she feels chased. She pulls his hair harder and he moans into her.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she pants, her hips rolling, trying to buck up against his mouth. He’s stronger than he looks; he holds her down with his forearm, and as she covers her face with her free hand, she says, “Fuck me.” Kendall’s fingers hurt they’re curled so hard into her thigh, her hip, and he keeps grunting, like this is enough to make him want to come, too. 

“Don’t come,” he says again, his mouth still pressed to her.

Across the room, she hears Roman say, “ _Fuck_ ,” the four-letter word mangled to four syllables in his mouth. 

Shiv comes suddenly. She can’t stop it. She makes a breathless noise like Kendall had punched her in the gut.

 

 

 

 

“Grace and I split.”

“Oh, shit, man, really?”

“Ugh, don’t give me that Dr. Phil shoulder to cry on, let me pet your dick, therapy bullshit.”

“What kind of therapists have you been seeing?” 

Roman got up, grabbed the bottle off his desk. He held it up for Kendall, gave it a shake. 

“No, thank you,” Kendall said, each word pronounced like a fucking State of the Union address. Roman poured into his empty glass. Licked the rim where it splashed. 

If he wanted to be honest, which he claimed he always did but in truth rarely ever wanted, Roman resented Kendall’s sobriety. No, not the sobriety itself but how fucking performative Kendall was about it. As if he was making a deliberate point in each sad seltzer ordered at a bar or each firm shake of his head when the bottle was proffered: Kendall Roy was not drinking anymore. Whatever. Fuck him. Roman Roy drank anything he could get his goddamn hands on. 

“What happened?” Kendall asked.

“I don’t know. Thanksgiving fucking happened. Nothing like a Roy family gathering to bring out the fucking worst in everyone, huh.” Kendall’s face went all faraway and soft, like a melted Muppet or some shit, which meant he was thinking about Rava or a waiting eight ball or Logan Roy crowning him fucking King of America or what the fuck ever.

“I’m sorry, dude. That’s fucking rough.”

“Eh. All I really lost is the fun infidelity shame flagellation thing after getting my dick wet with some strange.” Kendall shook his head. “Rebound fucking though, that’s like god-tier level irresponsibility. No one gives a shit. I could fuck my dick raw through this entire goddamn building and all anyone would say is, ‘poor, poor Roman Roy. He’s going through such a time.’”

“Yeah, don’t do that. Please.”

Roman fixed his gaze on Kendall. 

“I fucked my trainer the other night.”

Kendall’s face blinkered like he was malfunctioning. 

“I thought your trainer was that dude. That he was a he. He was that dude.”

“Yeah. Brex.” Roman waited. He wanted to see what Kendall would do. All Kendall did was blink again, sit a little straighter in his chair.

“Brex?” Kendall’s face went all thoughtful and contemplative.

“Abort whatever half-baked bullshit Brexit reference you got cooking in that sad, misshapen little head of yours.” 

Kendall flipped him off, lazy. “That’s his real fucking name?” he finally said.

“Yeah, that’s his real, manly, muscular name.”

“Oh. Okay. Yeah. Well. Good for you, man.”

That was it? Fucking disappointing. He didn’t want this faux-woke colors of the rainbow acceptance routine. He had wanted a rise out of Kendall, and fuck if that wasn’t some word play. Roman always liked when Kendall’s good boy act went south. When everything about him skewed into a wild, unforgivable ugliness. It was what had made his whole addict phase tolerable. Was Kendall insufferable? Sure. But he was also a fucking maniac. 

Roman took a long, hissing drag from his glass. “You ever have a dude fuck your ass?”

“What? I — no. No, I haven’t — is that? I don’t, you know what, I don’t need to know that.”

“Yeah, but you’re curious now, aren’t you, you fucking perv.”

Kendall held his arms open. “I’ve said like five words this entire conversation.”

“‘I’ve said like five words this entire conversation,’ fuck you.”A pause; he watched Kendall for any sudden movements. “And for the record and the curious, I fucked him.”

Kendall was very still. “So, then, are you … ?”

“Look at grandpa here with the labels. An asshole is an asshole,” he shrugged. His mouth stretched in a mean grin, like some Joker-level shit. “You’re telling me you never took a cock.”

Kendall’s mouth quirked. “Not all of us went to military school.”  


“Ha, ha. Funny. And I was sent, cocksucker.” Off the lift of Kendall’s eyebrow, Roman laughed. “Fine, cocksucker-in-denial.” 

Technically, Kendall didn’t outright deny anything. And, technically, that was really fucking interesting.

 

 

 

 

Shiv can’t catch her breath. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Roman’s approach. He pauses before the both of them. And then he bends down and he messily kisses Kendall on the mouth, still wet with her. She watches Kendall go rigid, like kissing his brother is somehow worse than eating her out. Roman licks at his mouth, tasting her. Shiv moves to squeeze her legs together, but Kendall blindly swats a hand out, warm against her inner thigh, and holds her open. 

Kendall and Roman kiss like they want to see who’s going to draw first blood: hungry, uninhibited. Like in its own utterly fucked way this is the closest thing to catharsis they know. Their mouths are noisy and mean as they kiss — if that’s even the word for a thing so ugly, spite-filled and desperate. Roman purposefully pushes his bare hips, his cock, against Kendall. Kendall makes a low, full-bodied sound deep in his throat at the impact. 

Roman smirks, pulls back from him. He moves to unbutton his own shirt, pulling it off in quick, hurried movement. Of the three, Kendall is the only one still fully dressed. 

“You lose,” he says, nodding to her. He’s barely out of breath, but his cock is still hard. Interested. He’s average, she thinks, which she knows would be the greatest insult she could deal him. “And as winner,” he says, trailing off. He casts his eyes back down to Kendall. Fucking Kendall, still on his knees. His hand still on her leg, the muscles jumping beneath it. “You get to suck my cock.” Off Kendall’s face — horrified, turned on, a nervous bug-eyed combination of the two — he laughs. “I’m just kidding. Get the fuck up. I’m gonna suck yours. Then I’m gonna fuck her.”

And he does. They are occupying some sort of liminal space, she thinks, where reason has escaped along with anything resembling morality. What’s the expression? In for a penny, in for a pound. 

She watches Roman sink to his knees this time. Kendall doesn’t do a goddamn thing to help, a fact Roman voices, as Roman unbuckles his pants. He pulls them down as quickly as he had undressed himself, leaving them all bunched around his right ankle. Kendall reaches to Shiv; he puts his hand back on her bare thigh, like he’s anchoring himself. Kendall’s cock is bigger than Roman’s, fatter at least, and already leaking. She expects Roman to say something snide about that, but instead he takes him immediately into his mouth. Like he’s been waiting for this.

She wonders if he’s done this before. Both of them. Not together, but with other men. She had never spared a thought for Kendall or Roman’s sex lives before this, and now she finds the questions, the curiosity, racing through her mind. 

Kendall leans into her, beside her on the couch, as Roman works his mouth on him. He keeps muttering, “oh fuck, oh fuck,” like he’s hoping somebody’s going to save him from this. No such luck. He pulls at Roman’s hair with one hand, tangles the other in hers. His fingers keep catching in strands of it, snagging it, making her scalp sting. She leans into it. His mouth is right there, and it’s so easy to close the gap, slick her mouth over his. Too easy. Feral ferocity takes him over, his hips bucking, fucking Roman’s mouth. His teeth bite at her mouth as he grunts. 

Her own ruthlessness rears its ugly head, and she reaches down. She wraps her hand around the base of Kendall’s cock where Roman’s mouth is too lazy to reach. Kendall’s mouth bumps against hers.

“Jesus, fuck, please,” he says, the cords in his neck sticking out, so she squeezes. She feels Roman’s mouth wet against her hand. She wants to shove her fingers down his throat, choke him. Instead, she releases Kendall’s dick. She palms the back of Roman’s head and sneers, “Come on, you can do better than that.” She pushes his head down until she can hear him, guttural, wet. Gagging. She lets Roman back up again, ignores him when he coughs, when calls her a bossy bitch or whatever. Kendall has closed his eyes, as if watching them would be a step too far. Like he’s trying to build arbitrary limits for something as wrong and unforgivable as this.

“Look at him,” she says to Kendall. She tries to keep her voice flat, but it wavers all the same. _Look at us_ was what she meant, but she knows there’s a price to be paid when you say the thing you want out loud.You have to always dress it in something else. It’s a more acceptable way to lie. 

Kendall does open his eyes, but it’s Shiv his gaze settles on, heavy-lidded and hungry. She pushes Roman’s face down again, everything in her drawn up tight and expectant.

 

 

 

 

That night at Connor’s house in New Mexico, Shiv couldn’t sleep. She came downstairs. She found Kendall sitting alone outside by the pool, drinking a beer.

“What the fuck. Come inside, it’s freezing out here.”

“Nope,” he said. He shook his head. “I’m communing with nature. Come join me, fellow traitor.”

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered under her breath. She shut the door behind her and came out. She sat down next to him on the same oversized pool chaise lounge. She glanced back towards the house. “This place is fucking hideous. It’s like Sandals Resorts bought the Alamo.”

Kendall snorted. They both watched the still water. “I can’t believe your therapist died in that pool.”

“What? He’s not my therapist. And he didn’t die. He lost some teeth. And I wasn’t here for it anyway.”

“Connor said he was dead. I think.” He took a sip. “He probably wishes he was dead though. So be the Logan Roy effect.”

“I’m too fucking tired for this,” she said. “What are you even on anyway?”

He paused, the lip of the beer bottle held up to his mouth. “Beer. Meth. Weed. Meth, mainly.”

“Oh, great.” She took the beer from him and took a long pull.

“That was mine,” he said.

“We’re sharing,” she said.

“That’s right. You work for a socialist now.”

“The way you assholes talk you’d think I mastered necromancy and brought Stalin back from the dead just so I could ride his dick.”

“His hammer and sickle,” Kendall muttered, snorted to himself again. He was almost happy, a misleading buoyancy to him.

“How long?” she asked.

“How long what?”

“Have you been using.”

“Today. No,” he tipped his wrist towards his face, his arm held awkwardly in the air. “I can’t read my fucking watch. Yesterday. Today. Get me on CNN. Kendall Roy, makes fake news retroactively true. I’m a self-fulfilling prophecy. I am my father’s son.”

“Do you need me to call Rava or whatever?”

“No, please do not call Rava or whatever.” He downed the rest of the beer. “She already thought I was, so you know, now I am, so that means she’s right, and that’s good, she likes when she’s right, so maybe, in a way, I did this for her.”

“You smoked meth so your ex-wife could be right for believing Dad’s bullshit planted story?”

“Bullshit no longer.” He laid back. “Everyone likes to be right.”

“You’re pathetic.”

“Yeah. Talk dirty to me, Shiv. That’ll make a man feel better.”

Their shoulders pressed together. He was over-warm and he wouldn’t stop fidgeting. “Would you believe me if I told you Roman is inside actually working.”

“Roman’s a good boy now,” Kendall said. Shiv laughed.

Kendall’s body was half atop of hers now, not exactly uncomfortably. Her shoulder pressed in between his shoulder blades. His chin could fit in the crook of her neck if they were the kind of people that expressed affection or even possessed it. “I know he doesn’t love me. And that’s fine.” 

“Roman?” she asked. It wasn’t necessary. She knew who he meant.

“No,” he scoffed. “Of course he loves me, and I love him. Dad,” he said and he stopped.

He was looking straight up at the clear New Mexico sky. “I know he doesn’t love me, and that’s fine.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I tell myself that, all the time. Anymore, anyway. After — after everything. Eventually it’ll feel like the truth, right? And that’s fine,” he said again. The words didn’t sound like Kendall’s. There was no heat, no energy to them. Tired resignation, that was what this was. Shiv got it then: the two of them operated from two completely different opposing positions. She always assumed that each and every terrible demeaning and belittling and condescending thing their father did to them was borne not from hate or, worse, indifference, but love. That he didn’t know how to love, not like normal people. That none of them did. They hurt each other because it was easy and it was natural and if you were playing the game you played to win. If you were willing to play, if you were willing to consider each other an opponent, then that implied respect. That was how she always assumed their father saw it. That each barb, each swipe, came from a place of love. It was supposed to. They hurt each other because they loved each other.

“Fuck you, Kendall. He loves you, it’s just with contempt.”

He turned his head. She could feel his breath on her neck. She could smell him — weed, beer, a flat stale mouth. “No, Siobhan. That’s you.”

“It’s how he loves the both of us.”

“No,” he said with a patience that did not belong to him. “That’s how you love me.”

 

 

 

 

Roman spits when Kendall comes. 

He kisses Shiv after; she can taste Kendall, salty and warm. Roman bites her bottom lip too hard, he pulls at her hair, punishing her. It doesn’t matter what for, tonight’s proven that to her. 

“Get on your knees,” he tells her. Their little Napoleon, always trying to create power where there is none. 

“You think I’d do that for you?” she says. 

“I think you will.” It’s Kendall who says it. She wants to know when he learned to talk like that, like he buried a threat and he's daring her to find it.  Despite herself, Shiv starts to inch towards the floor when Roman grabs her hair again. 

“Not like that,” Roman says.

Instead, he has her get on her knees, her back to him, her legs spread over Kendall’s lap. He bends her over, and she lets him. There’s power in letting someone do the things you want to you. Kendall shoves her hair off her face, too kind, too tender a gesture for her to take, so she closes her eyes, ducks her head. 

She does nothing to either of them; they touch her instead. Roman’s fingers push between her legs — “fuck, you got her soaked” — and Kendall pushes her blouse off her shoulders, his fingers stuttering over the buttons and then it’s his open mouth stuttering over her bared shoulders, her collarbone, her throat. 

She lets this happen: Roman fucks her from behind.

Kendall kisses Shiv while Roman fucks her. His cock twitches in interest beneath her, his mouth hot, as needful as anything else about him. Her mouth skids off of his, down to his chin. They’re not even really kissing, her body jolting too hard from Roman. Kendall’s eyes are fixed on him behind her. Kendall’s hand is still knotted in her hair, but with his other hand he reaches, grabs the curve of Roman’s ass.

“Fuck, Kendall, yes.” Roman drags in a harsh breath, a harsh thrust to match. “Next time, I’ll fuck your ass, Ken, I’ll fuck you and make her watch.” Everything in that statement makes her brain short circuit, but she’s caught out most by _next time_. Next time, Jesus fucking Christ.

Kendall, under her, makes a soft noise. “You’ll make me come on your cock? You think you can make me come like that?” 

A wild, incredulous laugh bursts from Roman. “Oh my fucking god,” he groans. “You hear how wet she is? I’ll make her come and then I’ll make you come — a fucking Roy family hat trick, fuck.”

“Shut the fuck up," Shiv grits out. “Just, stop talking.”

Kendall lets go of Roman. He cradles her face, his thumb dragging over her mouth.

“You gonna come again for us?” Kendall asks, low, mean, his mouth at her ear. He has his hand between her legs now, rubbing at her, directionless and slick, bumping into Roman’s cock as it pushes in and out of her. 

Roman keeps up his own demented profane patter. He tells her he’s going to come in her, won’t Daddy be proud. He says that if Kendall wasn’t such a limp dick she could’ve had them both at the same time, two cocks inside of her, she’d like that wouldn’t she, and she moans a sob, clenches hard, tells him again to shut the fuck up, wanting to come and wanting to kill him at the same time. She can’t even remember what the game is here, but she’s certain she’s not winning, not anymore. Clinging to Kendall, pushing back onto Roman, begging them both to give her something she knows they’ll give her, but there’s a catch, a price. Her pride, at the least. Something more, unnameable. 

But Roman comes before she can again. Then it’s Kendall finally pushing his fingers into her as Roman sags beside them both. Roman did come inside of her, just as he threatened he’d do, and it soaks Kendall’s fingers.

Later, Shiv will be alone in the bathroom. Something like shame and horror will cascade through her, not enough to drown out the steady, mounting ache between her legs. She will know: of all people to have this destructive, this damaging, of intel about her. She will have given two of the least trustworthy, the most opportunistic, people she knows enough to ruin her. 

She comes silently on Kendall’s hand, her face buried against his shoulder, Roman’s hand wrapped tight around her thigh. 

But then, they will have given her more than enough, too.

 

 

 

 

“God, your family.”

Here we go, Kendall thought. He tipped his head back against the seat but he didn’t look at her. “What now?” he asked. His heart felt as if it beat in time with the tires on the rain-slick road, an impossibility, his body outside his control and understanding. He had planned to snag only one bump in the bathroom at his dad and Marcia’s, but when he had pulled a hand mirror out of the bathroom drawer he found one cheap earring, a mostly used compact of rust-colored blush, and a tube of dark red lipstick, smeared around the rim. Detritus of a life lived, he had thought. He thought of them, seated around the table in the other room, that same lipstick maybe smudged against her wineglass. He thought of Roman, Shiv, seated there, too. He thought it wasn’t just in that drawer but inside of him: collected detritus, the life lived. He thought a lot in a very short amount of time and he found it left him very tired. So one bump became another and another after that, his sinuses burning, and he had gasped when he came up, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was met by his own reflection, above and below. 

Or maybe it wasn’t as deep as any of that. What the fuck did he know. There was something about that apartment though, his father bled into the floor and the walls, the air that circulated — greed incarnate; it was contagious. Just being in there made a man want more. 

He wanted more now. He wanted quiet. He was starting to come down now and his head ached.

Rava was talking. He wasn’t listening. “You don’t listen. You never listen.” That had been complaint number three behind complaints one and two (the drug use, the absenteeism, though if you asked Kendall, they were one in the same) when Rava had first broached the subject of divorce. The only time. That was all she needed. Unlike Kendall, Rava always knew when to leave a room. 

“What?” he said to her now. He jerked his head up and Rava glared. 

“I said your family,” and then she paused. She shook her head and looked away from him. Sometimes he forgot that looking at him might be just as difficult as it was for him to look at her. A consequence not just of divorce but of loving someone the wrong way. There was a right way and a wrong way to love somebody. This was another thing Rava had explained to him as she was leaving. “I don’t understand how you don’t get that by now,” she said. 

“You all think cruelty is the same thing as necessity,” she said to the window. 

“What?” Kendall felt dumbed, bludgeoned. He wanted another bump. 

She laughed but it was sad. Incredulous, even, which he didn't think was fair. They had been married for how long. She had known him even longer. She should know him by now. His family. How long had they been married? The number escaped him. 

“You forget the things that matter.” That had been complaint number four. That had been the only one Kendall found real fault in on her part. He knew what mattered, she just had never understood it. 

Rava turned back to face him. “It’s like you all think if it doesn’t hurt, it didn’t work.”

Fifth Avenue clipped by. He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted out of this car. He wanted more. He turned to her quickly. 

“I don’t understand how you don’t get that by now,” he said. 

 

 

 


End file.
